Thats only one part of it, but super cool nonetheless - helped me understand how to do the glow effect!
Its my fault for making the effect too subtle in the second image. By shading I mean like actual shading/lighting that an artist would do manually to render a sprite to make lighter/darker areas. This animated gif highlights what I meant:
In the image editing program I draw my sprites in I can use effects filters to give the sprites a one-click instant artificial shading as pictured above. I was wondering if Pixel Composer could do something similar or even better.